It’s been a running joke whenever we see John Hagney.

The well-loved social studies teacher at Lewis and Clark High School taught both of our daughters. He usually starts by offering a mock apology. “I’m so sorry,” he says, grinning.

Both of our daughters became sociologists. And the joke, of course, is that without Hagney’s influence they might have found careers so lucrative that one day they’d be keeping my husband and me in the style to which we’d like to become accustomed.

Recently, our daughters, who now live in Austin, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado, texted me with sad news. Hagney’s award-winning Practicum in Community Involvement class ended this year, a casualty of changing state standards, and The Spokesman-Review’s story quickly spread via Facebook among their outraged classmates.

“Bummed to see this news,” wrote Melissa Huggins, Get Lit coordinator at Eastern Washington University. “PICI had a significant impact on so many students, myself included, and it’s a shame to see it end. PICI was such a unique part of our education, and for many of us, those internships were one of the first stepping stones in figuring out what we wanted to do and who we wanted to be.”

Assistant Washington Attorney General Emily Yates wrote, “What a shame. This class had a HUGE impact on my life putting me on my career path today.” An internship in family law at the Center for Justice eventually led her to practice primarily in juvenile litigation.

Hagney was deluged with emails after the story appeared. His daughter told him the Internet was on fire. That’s because he developed an innovative college-level class that engaged students and inspired them to research many of America’s most difficult issues.

Last week, Hagney talked with me about the demise of PICI. He made the decision himself. The state now requires a new civics curriculum. Hagney believes aligning PICI to the new curriculum would significantly damage its quality.

Hagney calculated that his students completed nearly 200,000 volunteer hours over the years. The class also provided Running Start credits at Eastern Washington University.

He reminisced about former students who explored a passion in the practicum class that turned into a career path. From the Lands Council to environmental science. From Cancer Care Northwest to oncology. From Hospice of Spokane to Harvard Divinity School.

Hagney does not dispute the importance of teaching high school civics. For 20 years, too few students studied it, he says. He’s also keeping an open mind about the Common Core.

But he does worry that Americans seem intent on filling the hard drives of teenagers’ brains as full as possible, often at the expense of their humanity.

Hagney began teaching Contemporary World Affairs at LC 34 years ago. He soon noticed that his discussions of serious global issues lead to a malaise among his students. They wanted to know: What can we do to make a difference?

Hagney designed the class as a way to literally “think globally, act locally.” He helped students find yearlong internships as volunteers with more than 100 local organizations. He allowed them to choose settings that resonated for them and required them to translate the daily challenges they encountered into social science research.

A list of 2013-’14 PICI students and their research is posted outside Hagney’s classroom at LC. Their weighty public policy topics read right out of the pages of the Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times opinion section: race, poverty, climate change, income inequality. It’s all right there.

On her wedding day a decade after our younger daughter graduated from LC, my husband ran into Hagney at Huckleberries. A few minutes later, the phone rang at our house.

It was Hagney. He called to wish Megan well, and he told her that Aug. 3 was also his wedding anniversary. It was an especially auspicious day for long and happy marriages, he assured her.

The reach of a passionate, committed teacher lasts far longer than the education reform movement of the moment. Next year Megan plans to complete a doctorate in sociology at the University of Texas.

And Hagney’s legacy, we’re not a bit disappointed to say, lives on.